AMD announces Radeon M300 series notebook video cards

http://anandtech.com/show/9236/amd-announces-radeon-m300-series-notebook-video-cards

All rebadges, nothing new:



/flame suit on

 

Yeah the Analyst day kind of read "2015... here are some animal crackers, but 2016 is all the cake and pudding you can eat."

 

Even for 2016 there is nary a mention of dGPUs. Looks like it's BGA APUs from here on out on mobile. Sad to say, I think AMD is dropping out of the mobile graphics race.

 

Its been looking that way for awhile. They lost a lot of their enthusiast market between failing cards, constant rebrands, serious driver issues, etc.

The future is not looking good for PC computing, be it laptop or desktop.

Oh and I'm going to drop this warning in advance - any flame wars or bickering will not be tolerated.

 

Ouch! M270 -> M375, that hurts even more than the fact that it's a rebrand. M365 would've been better (that's how the rebrands usually go). Lisa Su, said they'll improve on all fronts and explicitly mentioned the mobile. I hope that they haven't given-up. But yeah, seeing this table, leaves only bad things to the imagination about the top tier.

 

Use of DDR3 memory for mobile GPUs in a new lineup for 2015 is a bad joke. My $0.02.

 

Aren't all mobile GPU's based on desktop designs? So if AMD releases new desktop GPU, which they claim will have HBM (stacked memory) and should be before Nvidia 3d memory, new GPU will be released also in mobile version later on and it should be easier since HBM design calls for smaller card already. So why all doom and gloom, if they were abandoning mobile GPU altogether, why all the rebranding now? We just have to wait a little longer or at least I really hope so, otherwise, we are all so up the creek without a paddle, regardless if you Nvidia and Intel fan. I think AMD wants synchronize new design release together with Win 10 and hopefully be fully ramped up for x-mas.

 

Pretty much. Though if the 390X lives up to expectations (at least 20% over 980) and is priced appropriately, I'd probably still get suckered in.

 

How does AMD make a mobile GPU out of a 300W Fiji chip?

There's nothing on the roadmap about HBM on mobile. 2016 mobile graphics is APU-only on FP4 BGA. Zen x86 CPU cores with DDR3/DDR4 compatibility and GCN graphics.

 

I'm really hoping AMD get some good products out soon. I used to have a nice (for the time) AMD card which got me into pc gaming around 2003-4 or so. I'm not loyal to any one brand. From it actually. When I went looking last month for a laptop and a desktop gpu all I found was 900 series mobile cards and a 970 desktop card that fit the specs I wanted. We all need AMD to step it up soon. Competition is good.

I figure they'll come out with something that will wow me later on this year.

 

AMD is trying to saving money. It's already waved the white flag on mobile GPUs.

 

Cool, so it is been 4 years and nothing new GPU from AMD, actually even worse with DDR3 . Radeon 7770M --> 8870M --> M270 --> M375. I was strong on AMD side, but this I cannot take anymore, had to change to Nvidia... It is actually shame AMD took down ATI, than might we still have competitive Radeon GPUs against Nvidia.

 

At this point let's just hope Zen pans out for AMD. I don't expect miracles, and I certainly don't think AMD will reclaim the performance crown, but if Zen can be price competitive with Ivy i7's then that's a already a giant step in the right direction. But yeah the mobile GPU space is going to suck hard for the next year or two (or maybe forever).

 

Quote:
How does AMD make a mobile GPU out of a 300W Fiji chip?

There's nothing on the roadmap about HBM on mobile. 2016 mobile graphics is APU-only on FP4 BGA. Zen x86 CPU cores with DDR3/DDR4 compatibility and GCN graphics.
End of quote
The road map you attached says "high performance GPU" with 2x performance efficiency, 2nd generation HBM, on 14nm FinFet process, it doesn't say desktop or mobile and if 2x efficiency is true, your 300W Fiji becomes 150W, cut few shaders, downclock it a little and you're at 100W, so how much power GTX 980m uses? HBM will make cards smaller, easier to fit inside a laptop. And since their CPU will have GPU build in they'll not abandon GPU altogether, so assuming they'll not go bankrupt before, they will have new mobile GPU, I'm 90% sure.

 

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Unless AMD can bring a direct competition to Nvidia's best by 2016. It's over. Done. No way AMD can recover. There is really nobody else that could even consider competing unless Intel decided to try their hand in the dedicate GPU market /shudder/. But at least it would keep Nvidia true and keep advancing. Otherwise we'll end up like Intel CPU's, with a meager 5-10% at best improvement with each annual update. The only driving factor might be 4k, to offer a reasonable solution to 4k gaming. Otherwise, nadda.

 

As always I'm very optimistic about AMD when it comes to what they bring to paper (and then sad when I see the end result). I like what they are saying about their Zen architecture and while they are a little mum on what their dGPU will be outside of their PPW, fabrication, and HBM, if they can come close to match Intel and nVidia's offerings then they are on the right path back... if not, well, they'll still have a market for the customized chips for systems like consoles.

Company's aren't running on impulse decisions. They have 3-5+ year roadmaps. We know what nVidia has planned for 2015-2018, what Intel has planned for 2015-2018, and AMD for 2015-2016. The biggest problem with AMD is that they only share what they have planned currently, and what they have coming in the next year. They aren't the best when it comes to transparency on where they are going.

 

I liked what I saw, but it all pointed out to a 2016 strong line up. Right now they will use placeholder items to compete or have presence so thats it.

As for their current mobile lineup announcement, if they did refine their APUs, they are probably betting on their weird "dual graphics" to offer better performance than their previous gens. But I don't expect them to launch anything radical or powerful until 2016.

Their Zen architecture seems to be a massive improvement by turning into SMT and increasing dramatically their IPC. Hopefully their new GPU's memory bandwidth will compete better than ever, at high resolutions.

 

I would say more like 35-40% over 980, it is 55-60% faster than 290X after all. It may even end up faster than that, since 380X is supposed to be faster than 980 at 4K and if they managed to get 40% faster than that it would be even more impressive.

 

That 55-60% figure was an estimate, and an optimistic one at that. To put things in perspective 25-30% over 980 would put 390X at Titan X level performance already.

 

Any word about its flagship? Is it certain that it will come also as rebrand?

 

I'll just... uh... put these away...

No word, but don't hold your breath. AMD doesn't really have anything suitable in the midrange sector. It's Fiji or Hawaii rebrands for the top, 7970-type cards for the new "midrange" and everything less than that is pointless. Even the 7970-type cards aren't good enough for "midrange" right now, since technically the 980 is "midrange", and the R9 290X (no matter how good a card it is) isn't designed to be a midrange card (power consumption, heat output, etc).

 

All we know about the performance of the flagship were from leaks of the 4GB Engineering Sample that put it slightly ahead of the Titan X. Now people will claim these leaks were nothing but fakes because their favorite cards were losing, but the fact is Titan X performance in those same leaks was accurate even before it was released. But lets say these leaks were fake since it is certainly possible, Videocardz still has a slide from an AMD presentation where they compared the 390X to 290X and it was on average 55-60% faster, which is more than Titan X's advantage over 290X. Also note that we have no idea how well the 8GB 390X WCE will perform, since a 4GB ES card (from earlier leaks) would not perform as well at 4K as a 8GB one with final drivers. We do know the specs though with 4096 SP ~ 1.05GHz and 640 GB/s 4-8GB HBM memory.

Now for the rest of the lineup don't pay too much attention to the OEM garbage that has been announced so far. Plenty of people have clearly stated that non-OEM 300 series lineup from top to bottom will be launched in June (either Computex or PC Gaming Show at E3). Cloudfire in Anandtech forums posted info that he received from someone about the 370X, according to whom it will have 780 level performance at 140W TDP and even HBM (not sure how accurate this is). This card is apparently based on Tonga XT with 2048 SP but Tonga didn't have HBM before so that's why I said not sure about it, if this is true though it is possible for R9 cards to all have HBM.

For the mobile part it's even more complicated. All we know is a few rebranded OEM parts and a previously leaked lineup that stops at R9 M385X which is a higher clocked Tonga, the mid end chips are a mystery due to new codenames and there is no info whatsoever on R9 M390X. If the 370X leak is true it is possible to see refreshes of older GPUs with lower TDP and higher clocks thanks to a better Globalfoundries process, and maybe even something new and interesting whenever M390X arrives. But whatever the case, at this point we know almost nothing about mobile so don't pay attention to whatever anyone says, wait for the launch to get the real specs, we are just a month away anyways.

 

Given that Alienware is listed as a partner, I can think of two things.

1. Clevo Rebranders or Clevo themselves are not ready for the R9 300m series currently. Rather, they either may use the GPUs (or GPU) later this year or not at all.
2. At least AMD is giving an effort in the high end mobile market. They are try to go all out on the lower end of the market with their dual graphics and APUs, but since their mobile CPUs are as powerful as Intel-U CPUs, that doesn't mean much for the higher end of laptops..

Still, seeing a small number of partners for laptops does not bode well for AMD. Coupled with the OEM GPU announcement, things don't currently look too bright.
PS. If we do want to know if there is a higher tier AMD GPU (say m390 or m390x), Alienware is usually clumsy with their products and leaks out names and basic specs on their low-traffic regions like Malaysia or Japan. It would also give us a good idea if the m385x is a m295x rebrand or not (if it is listed).

 

You know, there is a reason you take so much fire when you post stuff like this. The best way to spin this would be saying something like "Leaked engineering sample benchmarks of the 390X suggest it might even be stronger than the Titan X, and AMD's own slide showing improvements from 290X to 390X back up the accuracy of that leak, even if it's a fake".

Sitting here and telling people we're crying about it being fake because "our favourite cards are losing" is asking for flame, because every enthusiast here is begging for AMD to figuratively school nVidia on how to make a good GPU. We're simply waiting for SOLID PROOF which we don't have, and getting hyped over possibilities is fun and all, but it doesn't help us in any way. The entire R9 M295X fiasco where we expected something amazing was proof of that, where it got hyped and expected and then... 970Ms at stock laughed at it.

1 - No, not even close. Clevo has always offered AMD and nVidia solutions. Even the P377SM-A had the option for Crossfire cards for a bit, until it was proven that even the 870Ms (in the same price point) were cooler and more powerful. In their new line there's no reason to include anything AMD currently has on the market, or it'll be a 100W, hot version of a 965M at this point. *IF* they bring out something good, it will be added to the ZM lineup (the PxxxSx line is likely too thin to properly manage one of those cards; especially if they revise their cooling system and put two fans for the CPU and one for the GPU to keep the cooling balance proper in the machine).
2 - Alienware has always offered AMD no matter what, at a price premium too, I might add. It's no surprise they still will offer it.

There MAY be a M390X card, but we don't know, and we don't know what it will be based off of. Running trend suggests it will exist, but how relevant it will be is another story. If there's nothing good to bring to the table they might just skip it and save R&D/manufacturing costs for a card nobody will buy.

 

Wasn't the 7970m cheaper than the GTX 675m, the weaker, and GTX 680m, the slightly stronger (at stock), when Alienware sold the m17xR4/m18xR2? I don't know anything about the other AMD offerings (even a sole m290x, but it may have followed what you said), but I can't consider that a price premium. Then again, that was about 3 years ago.

 

Alienware's offerings for AMD have been more expensive than other places. Usually AMD's cards were ~$100 more than the second offering of nVidia (675MX, 770M, 870M, etc) but traded blows with the flagship card. It was good bang for buck until enduro appeared, and then nVidia pulled ahead too far with the 780M, such that the 780M was worth the extra cash to many, and then with the 870M being an OC'd 680M at stock, AMD's offerings just fell through. Alienware still offered them though, at quite a price premium.

Also, the GTX 675M was the 580M rebranded, which was not competing with the 7970M. That'd have been the 6990M combatant.

 

I already knew that. I was just using it as a comparison to Alienware's then-upgrade options.
As for the rest of your post, okay, that makes things more clear.

 

Let's put it this way, I didn't really point to members of this forum, especially anyone in particular. It has more to do with people on tech website comment sections. If you have ever read WCCF comment section you know exactly what I am talking about, the case is the same for Fudzilla comments and some other forums and to a lesser extent even Videocardz comment section. Anyway if anyone thought that I was talking about this forum I apologize.

 

People on comment sections don't know anything 98% of the time. I think twice I might have found users who had some decent engine knowledge or something... but that was it. I don't consider fanboy statements to mean anything, but it still stands to reason: we want some facts.

 

Bumping because of Apple.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9268/apple-announces-2015-15-retina-macbook-pro-cheaper-27-retina-imac
There are two GPUs that stand out: the m370x and m290. The m370x is probably a rebrand of the m270x but with GDDR5 as opposed to DDR3 (like what Lenovo did to the m375). However, the R9 m290 is a "new" GPU. It's probably a rebrand of the supposed HD 7950m, but maybe it's based of a different architecture but weaker than the m290x. The HD 7950m, according to notebookcheck, is on par with the m280x, so either it's an overclocked 7950m or a GPU based on a different architecture.
In any case, this does hel paint what the m300 line could consist of in relation to the m200 lineup.
Given that the Macbook Pro 15" uses the m370x, it could (but unlikely) be possible that its 15" competitors use a competing Nvidia GPU or the m370x/m375 with GDDR5.
EDIT: Also, AMD has detailed information about HBM, and there are a lot of sites about it. HBM could play a role in mobile GPUs this year... just not next month, I would think.

 

This is just such a disappointment... When is AMD going to release something competitive on the mobile GPU side? Not to mention, desktop 300 series is still not out...

 

Hopefully soon I would like to see more competition.

 

Uh there is no such thing as a 7950M

 

according to notebookcheck there is dunno

 

NotebookCheck is wrong

 

Hey, I was just looking a source. I mean, tell that "wrong" to GPU-Z. All it was was a rumored GPU, and that's it. That's why I said "supposed HD 7950m".

 

That also says it's unreleased, and there are no vBIOSes or GPU-Z validations or known laptops containing it. The alleged 7950M is an underclocked 7970M.

 

Well this is pointless. Anything to add on the table on what I posted other than a misunderstanding of "supposed"? Things like these deter the topic into meaningless ramblings.

 

I am reserving judgement until the MBP is tested. Anything less than 960m performance means I am not buying it. The Razer is looking better all the time.

 

Why?

 

Why apple insists in using those mid-end GPU on their units?

 

Because anything more powerful would overheat and throttle inside that thin, poorly cooled chassis

 

Apple doesn't know how to make good notebooks. They know how to make good LOOKING notebooks. And good FEELING notebooks. Everything else about their notebooks is so far below par for the course that they're a joke.

Which is why we make jokes about the Razer Blade, because it's the gamer's macbook.

 

Because it's green and a good oven heater in Winter

 

yet they have cpus running at 4.0ghz in them

 

Which MacBook has a 4 GHz CPU in it?

 

I think he means the i7-4980HQ turbo boosted (even then, the 4.0 GHz only applies to using one core).
The Macbook Pro 15" is sold with the i7-4980HQ as the high end option.
But back on topic, I did find something odd about the m370x. As to which m270x it is going to be a rebrand of because there are two versions of them.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2213/radeon-r9-m270x.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2582/radeon-r9-m270x.html
Most likely the latter one, which actually would be an improvement of the 1st version m270x, or a lower-clocked m275.

 

3.8 GHz 3-4 core Turbo. Can the MBP actually hit that under load when gaming notebooks twice the thickness and weight can't?

 

From what I have researched (which isn't much since they only talk about the i7-4850HQ/4870HQ), not under Windows. Maybe under OS X, but it would be an incredible stretch. Maybe not for a long time.
We also have to keep in mind that the rMBP can come without a dGPU. Without a GPU, it's possible, but with a dGPU, I highly doubt it.

 

that's what i've been wondering. how come they don't throttle yet thick gaming laptops do? shouldn't this allow for them to put a better gpu?